Lynch Canyon Oil Field – It’s History, Geology and Development

Eschner, Stanford
[email protected]

Lynch Canyon oil field is located within Monterey County approximately 30 miles north of Paso Robles in Section 24, Township 22 South, Range 10 East, MDB&M, and one mile northeast of the giant San Ardo oil field on the east side of the Salinas Basin.

Discovered in 1963 by Moriqui Oil Company, the Lynch Canyon oil field was abandoned in 1968 after ten productive wells had produced about 125,000 barrels of 10 gravity oil. In 1979 General Crude and Mobil Oil each drilled two wells with a plan to steam, but never did so. Trio acquired the property in 1987 when Mobil relinquished its leases.

The Lynch Canyon Oil Field encompasses 320 proven acres within a gently southwest plunging structural nose, with an east-trending thrust fault entrapping production at the updip north end of the closure. The productive interval is the upper Miocene Lanigan sand, a 40-foot-thick near- shore sand-bar deposit overlying granitic basement at a measured depth of 1,700 feet (1,000 feet subsea). Average porosity is 35.5%, permeability is 2-6 d’Arcy’s, oil saturation is 70-75% and oil gravity is 10.5 degrees.

Trio Petroleum LLC commenced field operations in 2005 with a program to evaluate and develop the oil accumulation with horizontal wells, utilizing steam to stimulate production. The drilling and production activities continue to evolve, including decisions such as well spacing, steam injection, water and gas procurement and water disposal. As of January, 2013, there are thirty two wells capable of collectively producing several hundred barrels of oil per day. The ultimate goal over the field life is to produce at least 50% of the estimated 20 million barrels of oil originally in place.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90162©2013 Pacific Section AAPG, SPE and SEPM Joint Technical Conference, Monterey, California, April 19-25, 2013